The Obama administration framed its decision to put women into combat as a matter of choice and fairness. “Not everyone is going to be able to be a combat soldier,” outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, “but everyone is entitled to a chance.”

Back in the year 2000, in the old new marriage conversation, we said in The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles (a statement I helped to draft):

“Marriage is a universal human institution, the way in which every known society conspires to obtain for each child the love, attention and resources of a mother and father.”

This year, the Institute for American Values released a call for a new marriage conversation, which says instead: “because marriage is the main institution governing the link between the spousal association and the parent-child association, marriage is society’s most pro-child institution.”

That is the difference gay marriage makes in how we converse about marriage.

We live in a culture where ancient drives that had a social purpose are increasingly diverted to activities meaningless in themselves but designed to satisfy those hungers, relatively harmlessly–but also unproductively.

Back in the year 2000, in the old new marriage conversation, we said in The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles: “Marriage is a universal human institution, the way in which every known society conspires to obtain for each child the love, attention and resources of a mother and father.” In today’s new marriage conversation, we say “because marriage is the main institution governing the link between the spousal association and the parent-child association, marriage is society’s most pro-child institution.”

Until now I have supported all bill and commitments of the Left. But there is, today, a deep confusion that gets in the way for me. The freedom of conscience allows me to speak honestly from abroad (Martinique) to the issues for the people of this chamber, whose opinions are diverse. Speaking for French citizens abroad, on the whole, we are opposed to homosexual marriage. The bill proposed would bring down all the structures, values, and understandings that have held together the social world of our archipelago.

This voice of the French overseas must be heard and taken into account. I must speak to the electorate and rectify their confusion about what is happening here and now. The risk here is tremendous, that the government might cause an irreparable rift. The proposed bill does notoffer supplementary liberties in truth. In fact, the proposed bill weakens the already delicate social framework that has bulwarked the Antillean and Anguillan islands in the wake of our liberation from slavery. I will go further: there is even the risk here that the bill would invalidate the pact that has tied us to the Republic of France for 200 years and more.